


Part 2: the way of an eagle in the sky

by batyatoon



Series: Three Things and Four [2]
Category: Tanakh, Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 2, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-19
Updated: 2013-02-19
Packaged: 2017-11-29 19:23:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/batyatoon/pseuds/batyatoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riddles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Part 2: the way of an eagle in the sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_ragnarok](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_ragnarok/gifts).



The royal house of Israel had long been used to foreigners; since the days of Daveed-the-king, the women's quarters had housed wives and concubines from a handful of other countries. Now in the days of his son Shelomo-the-king, their numbers were increasing; highborn ladies from increasingly farther and stranger lands filled the women's quarters, all with their favorite handmaids and garments and amusements and gods.

So it said something, Shelomo thought, that the people of his household were finding the Shebans stranger than anything yet. Some were outright frightened to enter the guest wing, and bartered with their friends to trade any tasks that might take them there; fortunately for them, others were fascinated, and sought any opportunity to go stare at them. He told the master-of-service to use his judgment, and permit it only so far as it would not discomfit their guests.

Talking with Queen Maqueda later over honeyed apples and almond cakes, he wondered why he had bothered. This was not a woman to be easily discomfited.

They were seated in a broad courtyard of the guest wing, open to the sky, all flowering shrubs and tiny fruit trees around a central fountain. Shelomo had brought only a few attendants of his own, which was as well: most of the courtyard floor was taken up by that same huge riding-beast, evidently a favorite of the queen like some well-beloved horse or dog, sprawled out on the sun-warmed paving stones with sleepy heavy-lidded eyes. Many of the queen's younger handmaids were seated around it, some actually _on_ it, working at their weaving: a pretty sight, as though they posed against a mosaic of blue-green gemstones. And, he felt certain, a tableau carefully planned for effect as well: _a dangerous creature_ , it says, _but gentle as a newborn lamb in the presence of its mistress._

"And have you more riddles for me today?" he asked lightly. "I've come to look forward to them." 

The queen laughed, and began with an easy one.

\-----

She watched his eyes as he answered, as always, seeing whether he glanced to the sky or down to one side, or studied her: was he remembering an answer heard or thought of before, puzzling it out on the spur of the moment, or watching to see if her face would give him some clue? There were signs of all three, depending on which riddle she asked him; the one about flax he had heard before, she rather thought, and possibly the one about naphtha, but not the one about grains of rice or the one about honeybees.

From the first she had thought, _he is as wise as my grandfather_ , a thing she had never believed about anyone else. By now she was beginning to think, _there may never have been another as wise as this man._

"Try this one," she said finally. "There are seven, and four, and two that sit at speech. If the seven and the four depart, three would yet remain to speak, and a fourth that may only listen."

Maqueda watched as his eyes traveled around the courtyard once, and again, and then lit with the pleasure of realizing this one would not be easy. He smiled, deep in his beard, and she let herself smile in answer.

"You and I are two," he mused slowly, "my attendants are four; your handmaidens are seven. If we should send out my four men and your seven maidens ..." Again his gaze roamed the yard, slower this time, pausing at the fountain; she could almost hear him thinking _the water speaks, and the stone listens?_ , and she saw the moment where he decided against that answer. And then she saw his eye fall on Nakuti, and stay there ... and his smile grow firm.

"There sits the third," he said, pointing, "who if she has not yet spoken, I will wager it is by your command. And for the fourth ... she must be with child, for I can see that you are not."

A murmur went up among the handmaidens, and Maqueda could hear the attendants going stiff in horror at their king's seeming foolishness. And then heard their gasps, as Nakuti raised her great head and smiled, revealing the gleaming black curve of the great egg hidden beneath her chin ... and said "Hail, wisest of kings," in her resonant voice.

  
  
"Wall Hanging Fragment"

\-----

_"Do you think King Solomon truly spoke the language of beasts, then?" She pours out coffee for the two of them, hot and strong, and sets down the pot beside the plate of honeyed pastry. Outside, the wind dashes more rain against the walls, like a handful of hurled pebbles._

_He shrugs, lightly. "People say 'the language of beasts,' as though beasts and birds spoke to one another as men do, saying the things that men might; and if we but learned their tongue we could join their discourse. Much likelier he simply had an understanding of beasts themselves, how they move, how they look at one or away, and from this he knew what they felt and what they wanted. And perhaps what they wished him to know. Beasts do not lie."_

_"No more do men," she says quietly, "with their own movements. A man's mouth can lie while his whole body speaks the truth."_

_Again that swift glance at her, and away. "Talking of birds," he says, picking up his coffee, "I must see to my eaglet soon. Would your cook be willing to part with any meat scraps she may have on hand?"_

__Yes _, she thinks with a mixture of tenderness and wry amusement,_ exactly like that.

**Author's Note:**

> "Wall Hanging Fragment" by author. Image created in Microsoft Paint and edited further using ArcSoft PhotoStudio.


End file.
